Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs. In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of the rapidly changing global landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.

In Defense of a Liberal Education

The liberal arts educational system is under attack. Governors in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina have announced that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Majors like English and history - which were once very popular and highly respected - are in steep decline, and President Obama has recently advised students to keep in mind that technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history when deciding on an educational path.

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

American democracy is, in many people's minds, the model for the rest of the world. Fareed Zakaria points out that the American form of democracy is one of the least democratic in use today. Members of the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve, institutions that fundamentally shape our lives, are appointed, not elected. The Bill of Rights enumerates a set of privileges to which citizens are entitled, no matter what the majority says. By restricting our democracy, we enhance our freedom.

A Leader's Legacy

Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, internationally recognized experts in the field of leadership and authors of the best-selling Leadership Challenge, explore the important notion of legacy and the critical questions any leader must ask him or herself in order to leave a lasting impact. In a series of 22 short essays, grouped into four parts (significance, relationships, aspirations, and courage), the authors explore the thorny and often ambiguous issues that today's leaders grapple with.

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of the Change

Directed at managers on all rungs of the corporate ladder, this thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the best selling Managing Transitions provides practical, step-by-step strategies for reaching goals and minimizing the disruptions caused by workplace change. It is an invaluable managerial tool for navigating an inevitably tumultuous time.

The Post-American World

For Fareed Zakaria, the great story of our times is not the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else - the growth of countries such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Kenya, and many, many more. This economic growth is generating a new global landscape where power is shifting and wealth and innovation are bubbling up in unexpected places.

True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership

True North shows how anyone who follows their internal compass can become an authentic leader. This leadership tour de force is based on research and first-person interviews with 125 of today's top leaders: with some surprising results. In this important audiobook, acclaimed former Medtronic CEO Bill George and coauthor Peter Sims share the wisdom of these outstanding leaders and describe how you can develop as an authentic leader.

Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World

Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world---a new business-minded middle class---that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.

Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World

Ian Bremmer argues that Washington's directionless foreign policy has become prohibitively expensive and increasingly dangerous. Since the end of the Cold War, US policymakers have stumbled from crisis to crisis in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine without a clear strategy. Ordinary Americans too often base their foreign policy choices on allegiance or opposition to the party in power.

Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower

When Hu Jintao, China's then vice president, came to visit the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero in 2002, he asked Hank Paulson to be his guide. It was a testament to the pivotal role that Goldman Sachs played in helping China experiment with private enterprise. In Dealing with China, the best-selling author of On the Brink draws on his unprecedented access to both the political and business leaders of modern China to answer several key questions.

World Order

Henry Kissinger has traveled the world, advised presidents, and been a close observer and participant in the central foreign policy events of our era. Now he offers his analysis of the twenty first century's ultimate challenge: how to build a shared international order in a world of divergent historic perspectives, violent conflict, proliferating technology, and ideological extremism.

Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change

Whether you're a CEO, a parent, or merely a person who wants to make a difference, you probably wish you had more influence with the people in your life. But most of us stop trying to make change happen because we believe it is too difficult, if not impossible. We learn to cope rather than learning to influence. Influencer is a thought-provoking audiobook that combines the remarkable insights of behavioral scientists and business leaders with the astonishing stories of high-powered influencers from all walks of life.

Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams and Why People Follow

In Strengths Based Leadership, best-selling author Tom Rath and renowned leadership consultant Barry Conchie reveal the results of their research. Based on their discoveries, the book identifies three keys to being a more effective leader: knowing your strengths and investing in others' strengths, getting people with the right strengths on your team, and understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.

Leading Outside the Lines

From the best-selling coauthor of the business classic The Wisdom of Teams comes an all-new exploration of the modern workplace, and how leaders and managers must embrace it for success. Katzenbach and Khan examine how two distinct factions together form the bigger picture for how organizations actually work: the more defined "formal" organization of a company-the management structure, performance metrics, and processes-and the "informal".

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

Meet Emily and Paul: The parents of two young children, Emily is the newly promoted VP of marketing at a large corporation while Paul works from home or from clients' offices as an independent IT consultant. Their lives, like all of ours, are filled with a bewildering blizzard of emails, phone calls, yet more emails, meetings, projects, proposals, and plans. Just staying ahead of the storm has become a seemingly insurmountable task.

The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower

One of the US government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise - and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.

Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy - the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy

Fukuyama examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out. He explores the different legacies of colonialism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and offers a clear-eyed account of why some regions have thrived and developed more quickly than others. And he boldly reckons with the future of democracy in the face of a rising global middle class and entrenched political paralysis in the West.

That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.

Publisher's Summary

Here is the New York Times and international best seller, revised and expanded with a new afterword. This is the essential update of Fareed Zakaria's analysis about America and its shifting position in world affairs.

The Post-American World pointed to the rise of the rest - the growth of countries China, India, Brazil, and others - as the great story of our time, the story that will undoubtedly shape the future of global power. Since its publication, the trends Zakaria identified have proceeded faster than anyone could have anticipated. The 2008 financial crisis turned the world upside down, stalling the United States and other advanced economies. Meanwhile, emerging markets have surged ahead, coupling their economic growth with pride, nationalism, and a determination to shape their own future.

In this new edition, Zakaria makes sense of this rapidly changing landscape. With his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination, he draws on lessons from the two great power shifts of the past 500 years - the rise of the Western world and the rise of the United States - to tell us what we can expect from the third shift, the rise of the rest.

The great challenge for Britain was economic decline. The challenge for America now is political decline, for as others have grown in importance, the central role of the United States, especially in the ascendant emerging markets, has already begun to shrink. As Zakaria eloquently argues, Washington needs to begin a serious transformation of its global strategy, moving from its traditional role of dominating hegemon to that of a more pragmatic, honest broker. It must seek to share power, create coalitions, build legitimacy, and define the global agenda - all formidable tasks.

None of this will be easy for the greatest power the world has ever known - the only power that for so long has really mattered. America stands at a crossroads. In a new global era in which the United States no longer dominates the worldwide economy, orchestrates geopolitics, or overwhelms cultures, can the nation continue to thrive?

Zakaria's analysis of the challenges of the modern world and changing international relations are excellent, well-researched and moderate with an emphasis on practicality. His arguments are always rooted in historical fact and are unbeholden to any singular philosophy. I have a degree in International Relations and Global Business and find that this book is an excellent summary of the global trends that many Americans are losing sleep about.

He provides recommendations for American policy to avoid going the path of the British at the turn of the last century. A must-read for anybody with an interest in American politics, economics or foreign policy.

Finally we have an accurate, well-researched, and intellectually honest description of America's predicament and our best course of action moving into the new century of the "Rise of the Rest."

This is a very researched book and written so well. Fareed did the book narrating himself. As jobs continue to be the issue and with rise of the rest, we need all be updated on these matters of geopolitics. Also I think the audio format is probably the best way to consume the book content.

Your report has been received. It will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

Can't wait to hear more from this listener?

You can now follow your favorite reviewers on Audible.

When you follow another listener, we'll highlight the books they review, and even email* you a copy of any new reviews they write. You can un-follow a listener at any time to stop receiving their updates.

* If you already opted out of emails from Audible you will still get review emails by the listeners you follow.